Evangelical Christianity: reflections on the views of George Eliot, George Henry Lewes and Philip Henry Gosse

Evangelical Christians play important roles in George Eliot’s first two novels: Scenes of Clerical Life (really three separate novellas in one volume) and Adam Bede. As is well known, George Eliot (see above) was the pen name of Marian (earlier Mary Ann, or Mary Anne) Evans and her interest in evangelical Christianity came from when she attended schools in Nuneaton and Coventry. In her Introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Scenes of Clerical Life, Josie Billington writes [1]: 

As an adolescent, coming of age in just the period – the 1830s – she writes of in Scenes, Mary Anne Evans was swept up in the religious current of Evangelicalism.. ..If the Oxford Movement sought to turn back the legacy of the Reformation, Evangelicalism sought to complete what the Reformation had begun, expunging the ceremony and sacrament which were the remaining formal vestiges of Roman Catholicism and rediscovering the vital puritan impulses of original Protestantism.. ..Evangelicalism offered a belief that was hard and uncompromising, yet passionately earnest and totalizing, which in the first half of the nineteenth century had a profound impact not just on the rural towns of England, but on the nation’s cultural and intellectual life in general. 

Never fully committed to evangelical Christianity, Marian went on to reject it, while retaining sympathies for the “good side” of some of those who believed wholeheartedly in this approach. Her views are discussed in an essay by Donald C. Masters [2]: 

While George Eliot (1819-1880) came to dislike the Evangelical viewpoint, her treatment of Evangelicals, particularly in her early novels, was much more sympathetic than that of other Victorian novelists.. ..Like many other disillusioned Christians she retained her belief in the Christian ethic. She liked the Evangelicals in spite of their doctrines and what she regarded as their naïveté and narrowness, because they made people better.. 

..Her early letters.. ..suggest that her acceptance of Evangelical principles was merely an intellectual process. She never made the complete personal commitment that is the secret and core of the Evangelical position.. ..She had lost faith in the Bible, the essential basis of the Evangelical tradition and described it.. ..as “histories consisting of mangled truth and fiction.” 

Many of us who have encountered evangelical Christianity, and subsequently turned away from it without making “the commitment”, can recognise George Eliot’s feelings. I have described my own experience [3]: 

My last contact with formal Christianity came at Torquay Boys’ Grammar School, where I went to meetings of the Christian Union, in which my elder brother was a leader. We sat around a table and listened to speakers, or to tapes of Billy Graham preaching. We also had prayer meetings when we all had to take part. Prayers were for the usual things connected with our salvation but, being a school, we also prayed for masters who were Christian, to boost their religious, as well as their educational, mission. I always dreaded prayer meetings and was not comfortable at any of the other meetings either. Unlike some of those present, I found Billy Graham strange and rather too energetic, and neither could I summon up much enthusiasm for a guest speaker who spent many minutes propounding the correct pronunciation of Bethphage. 

There were tracts for us to hand out in the school, delivered in bulk from the Evangelical Tract Society.. ..I couldn’t hand out such things and had quite a collection by the time I stopped attending the Christian Union. 

It is not difficult, then, to see how personal experience of religious groups affects one’s reading of George Eliot’s novels. Like Marian, I rejected the thinking of evangelical Christians (on many grounds) and, like her, try to see their good human qualities, although I worry about their tendency to proselytise to those going through hard times. 

In addition to Evangelicals, another feature of George Eliot’s novels is the presence of young children, often described in detail and forming important threads to the various storylines. Marian loved children, but she was unable to have any of her own. The reason was not biological, as far as I know, more that she didn’t marry until she was in her sixties and spent most of her adult life living with George Henry Lewes (see above), who was already married and had children. If “living in sin” was bad enough in the eyes of many in Victorian society, having children while in such a relationship would be viewed very severely indeed. Certainly, Marian’s cohabitation with Lewes caused much pain to her upright family and this, in turn, was the source of much sadness to her. 

The couple had a very close relationship, with Marian depending on George for reassurance and advice. He was from a theatrical family and both acted in, and wrote, plays: he also wrote novels, was an expert on Goethe, published an outstanding review of philosophy through the ages, contributed to many leading artistic journals, and was also what we would now call a networker [4]. Although unprepossessing in appearance (some called him ugly), he was popular for his conversation and energy and he knew many of the movers and shakers in Victorian literary society. He was one himself. 

Lewes met Marian through John Chapman, the publisher of the Westminster Review [5]. Chapman was a “free-thinker” and Marian lived in his household, where relationships between Mr and Mrs Chapman, their governess, and Marian were complicated. In Ashton’s account [5] we read that Chapman “visited Marian Evans’ room, where she played the piano for him and taught him German.” It was all too much for Mrs Chapman and Marian left the household, but returned in 1851 when Chapman asked her back to help him as part of the editorial team on the Review, where her “sharp brain, wide knowledge, willing labour, and ability to deal tactfully yet firmly with touchy contributors” [5] was invaluable. 

During 1852, Marian was spending much time with Herbert Spencer, the philosopher and biologist to whom she had been introduced by Chapman, and they “were so often in one another’s company that ‘all the world is setting us down as engaged’, Marian would have liked nothing better, but Spencer was less keen.” [5] The result was that, in 1853, Lewes replaced Spencer in her affections and this was the start of a deep relationship that only ended with Lewes’ death. He was a great support to Marian and advised her during her first, tentative steps as a novelist and he played the same role after she had become famous and was being hailed as a very significant writer. Marian had come a long way from those evangelical Christian schooldays in Warwickshire and Lewes had also progressed in his interests. Like his hero Goethe, he then became interested in practical science. 

In the early years of his relationship with Marian, Lewes had been chided by T.H.Huxley as a “’mere’ book scientist ‘without the discipline and knowledge which result from being a worker also’”. This came after a review that Lewes had written and it perhaps inspired him to join the Victorian craze for the study of marine natural history. The leading figure in popularising this interest was Philip Henry Gosse, who had written A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast (1853, centred on Torquay and Ilfracombe), The Aquarium (1854) and Tenby (published in March 1856, centred on the Welsh seaside town). Lewes read all these books and, in the summer of 1856, he and Marian left for Ilfracombe (where they befriended another enthusiast, Mr Tugwell, the curate of Ilfracombe) and then Tenby; following this with visits to the Scilly Isles and Jersey in spring and early summer of 1857. It was during the first section of this marine shore adventure that the pair discussed the possibility of Marian’s writing a novel. The Sad Fortunes of the Rev Amos Barton was commenced in the autumn of 1856 and became the first part of Scenes of Clerical Life published, anonymously, in instalments in Blackwood’s Magazine through 1857 and as a book in two volumes in 1858. She was not an enthusiast for studying shore life, so Lewes’ avid work on the coast allowed Marian time to think about the content of her embryo novel. 

Lewes’ work was published in instalments in Blackwood’s Magazine through 1856/7 and came out in book form, published by Blackwood and Sons and dedicated to Richard Owen, as Sea-side Studies in 1858. In the preface, Lewes pays homage to Huxley (perhaps the latter’s comment stung?) and there are frequent references to Gosse throughout the book. Both men showed a particular interest in sea anemones and, indeed they had a dispute over one aspect of the biology of some of these animals [6]. It is interesting to make a comparison of the two men. 

Whereas Lewes was a free-thinking agnostic (if he must be classified), Philip Henry Gosse (above) was a strict believer in the literal truth of the Bible [3] and an evangelical Christian. In 1857 he moved to St Marychurch in Torquay after the death of his wife Emily, who had accompanied him to Torquay, Ilfracombe and Tenby on the collecting trips that resulted in his earlier books. Emily was a writer of religious tracts (like those I failed to hand out during my school days) and as deeply committed as her husband to evangelical Christianity. Her painful death, leaving Henry Gosse with his young son Edmund (later Sir Edmund), was the main reason that he decided to move. 

At the time of the move to Torquay, he was expecting high sales of his book Omphalos, that was to be published in late autumn 1857, and he was looking forward to the attention that it would bring. Although there are many references to God and Creation in Henry’s books, Omphalos saw him tackle head-on the conflict between the Biblical Creation and the idea of geological time scales, that were becoming accepted by the mid-1850s. It is subtitled “an attempt to untie the geological knot” and it was Henry’s attempt to ease an obvious conflict: his idea being that rock strata and fossils were all created over the short period of the Biblical Creation. In Omphalos, he showed a thorough knowledge of geology and palaeontology and knew that large time periods were involved, but clung to his odd theory, for which he was duly mocked. Through all the difficulties of 1857, Henry didn’t question his beliefs; rather he became even more ensconced in evangelical Christianity. He reduced his attendance at meetings of the learned societies and didn’t have much personal contact with members the scientific community, although he had correspondence with many people, including Darwin. 

There are many that still adhere to the Creationist views shown by Henry Gosse, although they make little attempt to provide a rational explanation to account for the differences between their views and those of the scientific community. At least Henry made an attempt, even if his explanation was unacceptable to both scientists and believers; Charles Kingsley, for example, chastised Gosse for suggesting the God appears to be telling lies [3]. It seems that evangelical Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible have the opinion that there can be no opposition to their view and cannot tolerate any other explanations. 

Lewes took a very different approach, as described by David Williams [4]: 

He thinks, or at any rate he wishes, that the scientific explorers and the religious no-compromise men.. .. can be brought together to ‘sit round a table’, as we put it, that Huxley and Darwin can amicably confer with the tractarians and the Evangelicals and come out of the room with a formula acceptable to both sides. 

There has been movement among some evangelical Christians and we are all familiar with the little car badge of a fish with limbs, bearing the word “Darwin” at its centre. Perhaps the only major difference for many is whether there was a Creator, or whether all that we see around us is the result of chance events. 

After the adverse comments about Omphalos, Henry Gosse spent much time collecting marine creatures from the shores of South Devon [3]. He was in the throes of producing his major monograph on sea anemones, that was to be a standard work on these animals for many years and is still consulted today. It contains brilliant illustrations, as Gosse was a very capable artist in watercolours [7]. 

In a letter sent to Tugwell in November 1856, Lewes writes [8]: 

It would be a pleasant thing for you to write the monograph on Actinae with W. Thompson; & as to the money, you can’t expect much from such labour, but may consider yourself lucky to be free of expense. At the same time you have a formidable rival in Gosse, who is I believe engaged on a monograph. 

This shows Lewes’ respect for Gosse as an expert in sea anemones, but in a later letter to Hutton on 5th May 1859 we read [8]: 

Gosse’s book is too poor for a review; & I have long been making notes of the history I shall sketch which will I hope be far more entertaining than a review. 

I assume that Lewes is referring here to Omphalos, as Actinologica Britannica appeared in book form in 1860, having previously been published in twelve parts from 1858-1860 [9]. Despite their disagreement over some points [6], Lewes clearly respected Gosse as a natural historian. 

We know that Lewes and Marian visited Torquay in 1868 and, while the former continued with dissections for a future publication, Marian was preparing ideas for Middlemarch and it is possible that there were some indirect references to Torquay in that book [10]. We also learn that Marian and Lewes enjoyed walks at Babbacombe, adjacent to St Marychurch [10], and one wonders whether they called on Gosse, or encountered him while walking. I cannot find reference to a meeting and would be intrigued to know how it might have gone and what Marian would have made of this evangelical Christian and a man who was not afraid of proselytising. The urge to spread the Gospel came through in many of Henry Gosse’s books, but rarely with the intensity of the extraordinary conclusion of A Year at the Shore, published in 1865, three years before George and Marian arrived in Torquay [11]: 

I cannot conclude this volume without recording my solemn and deliberate protest against the infidelity with which, to a very painful extent, modern physical science is associated. I allude not only to the ground which the conclusions of modern geologists take, in opposition to the veracity of the “God which cannot lie,” though the distinct statements which He has made to us concerning Creation are now, as if by common consent, put aside, with silent contempt, as effete fables, unworthy of a moment’s thought, and this too before vast assemblages of persons, not one of whom lifts his voice for the truth of God. These assaults are at least open and unmasked. But there is in our scientific literature, and specially in that which takes a popular form, a tone equally dangerous and more insidious. It altogether ignores the awful truths of God’s revelation, that all mankind are guilty and condemned and spiritually dead in Adam; that we are by nature children of wrath; that the whole world lieth in the wicked one; and that the wrath of God abideth on it: it ignores the glorious facts of atonement by the precious blood of Christ, and of acceptance in Him. It substitutes for these a mere sentimental admiration of nature, and teaches that the love of the beautiful makes man acceptable to God, and secures His favour. How often do we see quoted and be-praised, as if it were an indisputable axiom, the sentiment of a poet who ought to have known better,–

 

“He prayeth best who loveth best

All things, both great and small;” –

 

a sentiment as silly as it is unscriptural; for what connexion can there be between the love of the inferior creatures, and the acceptableness of a sinner praying to the Holy God? It is the intervention of Christ Jesus, the anointed Priest, which alone gives prayer acceptance… There is no sentimental or scientific road to heaven. There is absolutely nothing in the study of created things, however single, however intense, which will admit sinful man into the presence of God, or fit him to enjoy it. If there were, what need was there that the glorious Son, the everlasting Word, should be made flesh, and give His life a ransom for many? … If I have come to God as a guilty sinner, and have found acceptance, and reconciliation, and sonship, in the blood of His only-begotten Son, then I may come down from that elevation, and study creation with advantage and profit; but to attempt to scale heaven with the ladder of natural history, is nothing else than Cain's religion; it is the presentation of the fruit of the earth, instead of the blood of the Lamb … This will be, in all probability, the last occasion of my coming in literary guise before the public: how can I better take my leave than with the solemn testimony of the Spirit of God, which I affectionately commend to my readers, – … THERE IS NO WAY INTO THE HOLIEST BUT BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS. FINIS. 

Henry Gosse was not only a proselytising evangelical Christian, but the leader of his group of Brethren in St Marychurch. He thus retreated into his own support group and this made it increasingly difficult for him to accept any religious views other than those he supported. It was religious differences, and the views of Henry on who one should have as friends, that was the basis of the conflict with his son, Edmund, described (with some elaboration?) in the latter’s famous book Father and Son [12]. This volume, more than any other work, has shaped our view of Henry [3], a pity as, if one could find a way of negotiating the religious hurdle, with all its side effects, he was a very nice man and would certainly be good company on rambles or on the shore. 

As we have seen, Marian Evans and Geoge Lewes were more accepting of those with religious differences and the former certainly recognised these human sides of evangelical Christians, although she was aware of their dogmatism and inflexibility. I think they would have enjoyed meeting Gosse, but what would Henry make of them? He would balk at their lack of faith in his version of Christianity and he would also strongly disapprove of their relationship. Henry did re-marry after the tragic death of Emily and his second wife, Eliza, while also being a member of the Brethren appeared to be a little more flexible in her approach to Edmund’s “sinfulness” than was his father. Edmund was also helped in his relationship with his father by his wife, the painter Nellie Epps, whom I have described as a “Nineteenth Century Wonder Woman” [13]. Nellie’s sister, Laura Alma-Tadema drew a profile of Marian in 1877 [14] and it would be amusing to know what the artist felt about her sitter and what views she shared with the Gosse family. 

 

[1] Josie Billington (1988) Introduction to George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life. Oxford, Oxford University Press World’s Classics. 

[2] Donald C. Masters (1962) George Eliot and the Evangelicals. The Dalhousie Review 41: 505-512. 

[3] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. e-book. 

[4] David Williams (1983) Mr George Eliot: A Biography of George Henry Lewes. London, Hodder and Stoughton. 

[5] Rosemary Ashton (2008) Lewes, George Henry (1817-1878). https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16562 

[6] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-human-side-of-science.html 

[7] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/04/stunning-biological-illustrations.html 

[8] William Baker (ed.) (1995) The Letters of George Henry Lewes Volume 1. Victoria, Canada, ELS Editions. 

[9] R.B.Freeman and Douglas Wetheimer (1980) Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography. Folkestone, Wm. Dawon & Sons. 

[10] Kathleen McCormack (2005) George Eliot’s English Travels: Composite characters and coded communications. Abingdon, Routledge. 

[11] Philip Henry Gosse (1865) A Year at the Shore. London, Alexander Strahan. 

[12] Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments. London, William Heinemann Ltd. 

[13] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/08/nellie-epps-nineteenth-century-wonder.html 

[14] https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01628 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Susan Bell – a little known, but significant, figure in the Nineteenth Century

Thomas Gosse was an artist, his son Philip Henry Gosse a famous natural historian, his grandson Sir Edmund Gosse a noted literary figure, and nephew Thomas Bell a professor and President of the Linnean Society. Although we know much about these men, especially of Henry and Edmund, their stories may have been different, and perhaps less well-known, if it was not for Susan Bell and two other women: Emily Bowes and Nellie Epps.

Susan was the sister of Thomas Gosse and, according to him, “of a more refined and cultivated mind than the rest” of his family [1]. Being 15 years older, she had a strong influence on Thomas and he writes in his unpublished autobiography [2]: 

I had always an inclination for drawing.. ..I would often take a piece of chalk and draw the outlines of various common and familiar objects on the wall or on the kitchen door. My parents, witnessing my propensity as described, thought it would be useless to bring me up to a common trade, and therefore were resolved at length to give it encouragement. Accordingly, early in 1777 my school education was resigned for the practice of drawing at home; and here my sister Susan, afterwards Mrs Bell, became my tutoress. A drawing-book was bought for me, and another borrowed, with other necessary items. Thus I went on learning by degrees the art of drawing, in order that I might subsequently become a painter by profession.

From these beginnings, Thomas had instruction from various experts and became a student at the Royal Academy in Somerset House, attending classes and lectures, and he then became a pupil engraver. Armed with this training, Thomas became an itinerant painter “not on paper but on ivory” [1] - a painter specialising in miniatures. Thwaite [1] remarks: “He carried with him little more than his Bible, his Theocritus and the tools of his trade, but he was clothed with the armour of righteousness and stoicism.” 

Henry Gosse, like his father, received instruction in drawing from Susan and she also passed on to him her passion for natural history, after he had moved, with his family, to Poole, where Susan lived (and seen above in a near-contemporary view by Turner – her house is shown in [3]). She had married Thomas Bell, a surgeon, and her son, also Thomas Bell, was born in 1792, so was 18 years older than Henry. Thomas went on to have a distinguished career in both Zoology and Dentistry, being “responsible for innovations in the use of various dental instruments and [he] was the first to treat teeth as living structures by applying scientific surgery to dental disease” [4]. Thomas’ work in zoology focussed mainly on crustaceans, amphibians and reptiles, and he was responsible for describing animals in the latter group that had been collected on the voyage of HMS Beagle. In addition to his position as Professor of Zoology at King’s College London, Thomas also served as President of the Linnean Society and chaired the famous meeting on 1st July 1858, when papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace on the origin of species were presented (neither author being present).

Although on friendly terms with Darwin, Thomas Bell “remained hostile to the theory of evolution throughout his life” [4], but further in the piece by Cleevely [4], we read that: 

Darwin always regarded him as a delightful, kind-hearted man, and believed that a more good-natured person did not exist but that his overwhelming administrative roles and professional work prevented him from achieving very much.  

He was certainly invaluable to Henry Gosse, as it was Thomas Bell who introduced Henry to the publisher John Van Voorst, who accepted Henry’s first book The Canadian Naturalist. He also recommended Henry to be the author of books on natural history, then being planned by SPCK (The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge), and the income from Henry’s publications allowed him to begin his career as a writer, illustrator and lecturer.

Clearly then, Aunt Bell was both an important direct, and also indirect, influence on Henry Gosse and his love of natural history. It should also be noted that both Henry and Thomas were uncomfortable with the idea of evolution by natural selection, and this became acute for Henry who went on to publish Omphalos, his “attempt to untie the geological knot.” The knot was the apparent conflict between the increasingly accepted view that the evolution of plants and animals occurred over long periods of time, and the description of Creation in the book of Genesis in The Holy Bible. As Henry’s belief in biblical accounts was absolute, he explained in Omphalos that rock strata and fossils, of which he had an excellent knowledge, were created along with living organisms within the six days of Creation. To him, they were “prochronic” and his theory was revelatory to him – he really thought he had resolved the conflict. Very few others agreed and the theory of prochronic existence met with derision in some quarters and neither the scientific, or the religious, establishment could accept Herny’s idea. This shook Henry, especially as he had ordered a long print run, as he expected the book to be a big seller.

Omphalos was published in 1857, the same year that Henry’s wife Emily had died, painfully, from breast cancer, leaving him with the care of their young son, Edmund. Henry and Edmund moved to Torquay just weeks before Omphalos appeared and, writing in 1890, two years after Henry’s death, Edmund suggested that [5]: 

..it seems to me possible that if my mother had lived, he might have been prevented from putting himself so fatally and prominently into opposition to the new ideas. He might probably have been content to have others to fight out the question on a philosophical basis, and might himself have quietly continued observing facts, and noting his observations with his early elegance and accuracy.

It is likely, therefore, that Emily could have persuaded Henry not to write Omphalos. What is certain is that Emily and Henry shared a profound Christian faith, while being different in personality. Edmund writes [5] that “her mind was a singularly gay and cheerful one” and he believes that she had a strong influence on Henry’s writing in books like A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast and Tenby that were both informative and full of enthusiasm, leading his readers to explore natural history for themselves. So, we not only owe a debt to Henry, but also to Emily and, alongside Aunt Bell, she was a major influence on him.

As he grew up, Edmund became distanced from his father in many ways, but especially over religious beliefs and practice, and their relationship became difficult. Edmund married Nellie Epps, a painter who had studied with the pre-Raphaelites, and she played an important role in maintaining contact between the two men. Nellie was much liked by Henry and his second wife, Eliza, who was herself a warm supporter of all that Henry did. Eliza also had a cordial relationship with Edmund, something that was established when he was a boy.

Three outstanding, yet little known, women and I am pleased to be able to add some notes about Aunt Bell to the earlier pieces that I wrote on Emily [6] and Nellie [7], both of whom I admire very much [8]. We know a great deal about Henry and Edmund Gosse, and a little about Thomas Gosse and Thomas Bell, but all four were very lucky in having relations and/or partners who were such a positive influence on those around them. I would like these women to have their proper place in history.

 

[1] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888. London, Faber and Faber

[2] Edmund Gosse (1915) Fragments of the Autobiography of Thomas Gosse. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 27: 141-150

[3] https://www.wessexmuseums.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pooles-early-naturalists-Gosse-and-Bell-final-1.pdf

[4] R.J.Cleevely (2004) Bell, Thomas (1792-1880). The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2029

[5] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann. 

[6] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/10/emily-gosse-notable-evangelical.html

[7] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/08/nellie-epps-nineteenth-century-wonder.html 

[8] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. e-book, available widely.

 

 

Baptism in the sea

Several denominations within Christianity follow the practice of baptism by immersion as a means of professing faith and for becoming a full member of a congregation [1]. Even branches of the Church that usually practise infant baptism, retain immersion of believers as an option, and services are conducted by the Church of England in some coastal parishes [2].

I was brought up as a Baptist and attended Winner Street Baptist Church in Paignton until I was eleven years old. Although I only attended two services of baptism, they left a strong impression and this in my description in Walking with Gosse [3]

Services of baptism at Winner Street were unsettling, although I only attended two. One was for my elder brother and I’ve no idea who was being baptised in the second, but it was likely to be a relative, or close friend. After some preliminaries, the minister conducting the ceremony walked down the steps into the pool followed, one at a time, by each candidate. Then came the solemn “I baptise you (or was it thee?) in the name of … (I can’t remember the rest)”, followed by a backwards dip to be completely immersed. Each successful candidate was then lifted up and made a soggy walk to the back vestry, accompanied by a supporter and the sound of joyous hymn singing. With my fear of water, I hated the thought of immersion, so didn’t think that I would ever be baptised. I was too young to be a candidate anyway, but if the idea of sending me to the services was to encourage me to think about a future baptism, it had the opposite effect. It wasn’t just the immersion; the whole church seemed to be filled with an unpleasant emotion. Or perhaps the emotion was fine, but there was too much of it? I still feel uncomfortable with the emotionality associated with evangelical Christian movements, yet a heightened state that borders on mild hysteria seems to be important to many believers.

This was in the confines of the church building in the 1950s, but in the Nineteenth Century at least one local group of Brethren held services of baptism in the sea, as their small chapel did not have a pool [3]. These Brethren were led by Philip Henry Gosse, the famous natural historian, and the party would gather on the shore at Oddicombe (see below in a more recent view) for the service, a practice that was stopped after onlookers started jeering and mocking the spectacle.

Henry Gosse’s son, Edmund, was baptised in 1859 when twelve years old, but not in the sea. It was unusual for one so young to be baptised in the Brethren and large numbers turned up at the main Brethren chapel in Torquay to witness the event (the room in St Marychurch probably did not have a pool, even though it had been newly constructed in 1859). In his famous book Father and Son, Edmund describes the baptism as being “the central event of my whole childhood,” and one would imagine it to have had an even greater impact if it was conducted at Oddicombe. As Ann Thwaite has remarked [4], Edmund relished being the centre of attention and I read his account with special interest, as the ceremony he described was almost identical to that which I had observed at the service of baptism in Winner Street. It is an event that invites an emotional response from the audience and I can imagine the comments from the jeering crowd of onlookers at Oddicombe in earlier times.

 

[1] https://christianindex.org/baptism-around-the-world/

[2] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/4-september/news/uk/cornish-beach-baptism-for-model-who-found-peace-and-greater-love

[3] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse, e-book, available widely.

[4] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 

"Walking with Gosse" as an e-book

 

The COVID-19 pandemic influences everything at present. When the lockdown was announced in the UK, I decided that I needed something to occupy my time, so pressed ahead with a re-write of Walking with Gosse, first published as a paperback in 2012.

Since 2012, I have continued my interest in the story of Henry and Edmund Gosse, so there was a chance to make a revision, and update, of the book and, as the paperback was rather difficult to get hold of, I decided that an e-book was the best way forward. I knew nothing about e-book publishing before setting out, other than that it was a means of making books easily accessible on mobile telephones, tablets and desktop computers, so I needed advice. This came from Dr Bob Carling, who has wide experience in publishing, and he took me through the stages needed to transform my MSWord files into the form acceptable to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other e-book publishers. As I am a technophobe, it would not have been possible to publish this new version of Walking with Gosse without Bob’s help and technical expertise, just as I could not have published the paperback without the help of Dr Susan England of Clio Publishing.

One of the advantages of an e-book is that it allows a “clickable” list of contents to allow readers to navigate through the text, although I very much hope that the book is read from cover to cover, as that was the way it was conceived. It is part autobiographical (Part 1), part biographical (Parts 2-5), and part commentary on our current approach to natural history, creation and religious conflicts (Part 6).

The list of contents of Walking with Gosse is given below (as an appetiser):

 

List of contents

 

Preface

Part 1

 Growing up at the seaside

 Being a Christian

Schools, parents, and an interest in natural history

 Leaving home for University

 

Part 2

 Henry Gosse, The Aquarium and looking through microscopes

Henry Gosse’s early life and the development of his interest in natural history

Henry Gosse becomes a professional natural historian and writer

The development of Henry Gosse’s religious beliefs

 

Henry Gosse’s own family

 

Henry Gosse as a teacher, lecturer and leader of field courses

 

Recognition as a scientist

 

Part 3

Omphalos

 Reactions to Omphalos and Henry’s need to incorporate his religious views into his writing

 

The Romance of Natural History

 Sea serpents

Extinction, animals that fall from the sky, and mermaids

 

Part 4

 

Father and Son

 

Early life in London

 

Moving to St Marychurch

 

Edmund becomes a Saint

 

Edmund’s baptism and the move to a new chapel

 

Tom Cringle’s Log, meeting Eliza, and the beginnings of independence

Edmund’s Epilogue in Father and Son

 

Part 5

 

Learning more about Edmund

 

Eliza Gosse’s view of Henry

 

William Pengelly – a deeply religious man who believed in “creation by evolution”

Henry Gosse and Charles Kingsley

 

A feeling of connection to Henry and Edmund

 

Part 6

 Henry Gosse and or contemporary world

 Henry Gosse and the negativity of religious faith

 Creation, evolution and the origin of life

 When believing in creation seems like an easy option 

Tackling the supernatural 

Dr Dryasdust and contemporary trends in Biology

 Being interested in teaching and lecturing

 Natural history and the media

 Epilogue

 

References

Acknowledgements

 

Appendix 1

 Henry’s scientific publications

 

Appendix 2

 Henry’s solely religious writing

 

A series of posts about Walking with Gosse will appear on my blog over the next few months. They will highlight some of the sections of the book and give what scriptwriters might call the backstory. In the meantime, I hope that you enjoy the book.

 

“Don’t judge a book by its cover”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a phrase that originated in the mid-Nineteenth Century and we have all been surprised when the content of books bears little relation to the illustrations that appear on their covers. A good example is provided by the illustrations for Father and Son [1], an autobiography by Edmund Gosse that leaves readers with a feeling of empathy for its author, as he faced the challenges of a strict religious upbringing in Torquay in the 1850s and 1860s. Among these readers is Sarah Perry who wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph [2] drawing parallels between Edmund’s experience of the constraints of a religious straitjacket with her own upbringing as a Baptist. She acknowledges the power of his writing in describing his father, the great Natural Historian Philip Henry Gosse, a creationist and member of the Brethren.

Father and Son had a long gestation. Edmund published the first biography of his father in 1890, two years after Henry died, and it is a largely factual account that also includes an appreciation by Eliza Gosse, Henry’s second wife and Edmund’s stepmother. Ann Thwaite remarks [3] that the biography was “extremely well received” and various of Edmund’s friends, such as John Addington Symonds and George Moore, saw another book in the story of Henry and Edmund, to be told from Edmund’s side. That book was Father and Son, and the germ of the idea took years to grow.

Like Ann Thwaite, Sarah Perry recognises that Edmund was not renowned for accuracy and Father and Son, published anonymously, and with the names of some key characters altered, may contain some exaggerated stories. However, it is a powerful work of literature and has done much to colour the reputation of Henry Gosse that we have today. Almost everyone comes to the Gosse family through reading works by Edmund (including Ann Thwaite, who followed up her biography of Edmund with her delightful biography of Henry, Glimpses of the Wonderful [4]). In contrast, I came to Edmund through reading Henry’s books and scientific writings and he was a fascinating and warm man. However, my admiration does not extend to his religious beliefs and this is recounted in Walking with Gosse [5] and numerous posts on this blog [6].

Considering the the way we select books set me thinking about how many people first chose to read Father and Son from the art work on the cover. But how true is the illustration to the content? Let’s look at some of the covers that have adorned Edmund Gosse’s book. The first I show (above) has the famous picture of Henry and Edmund that was used as the frontispiece for the first edition of Father and Son. The photograph was taken in Torquay in 1857; the year when they had moved to St Marychurch after the death of Henry’s first wife Emily. It is touching and clearly meant much to Edmund.

The next cover features the wonderfully sensitive portrait of Edmund by John Singer Sargent (above).

We then go on to see covers from various editions (above) that show the shore where Henry and Edmund collected specimens or the countryside through which they walked. They provide a general background, but they are not recognisable as being from Torbay.

The final series of cover illustrations (above) appear to have been created by artists who had little inkling of the content of the book and some of them are decidedly strange. As stated earlier, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

[1] Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments. London, William Heinemann.

[2] Sarah Perry (2018) Like meeting the gaze of a friend in a room of strangers. The Daily Telegraph 24th November pp. 14-16.

[3] Ann Thwaite (1984) Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape. London, Martin Secker and Warburg.

[4] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888. London, Faber and Faber.

[5] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. e-book.

[6] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com (numerous entries).

It should also be stated that various editions of Father and Son have covers based on designs (see below).

  

I am grateful to Greg Peakin for pointing out the article by Sarah Perry.

Land and Sea

Philip Henry Gosse, the famous Victorian naturalist and populariser of marine biology, published Land and Sea in 1865 and, in his first biography of his father [1], Edmund Gosse writes of the book:

..some of the sketches were rather trivial and diffusely told, besides possessing the disadvantage that they seemed like discarded chapters from other books, which indeed they were..

However, one chapter – “Meadfoot and the Starfish” - shows the writing of Henry Gosse at its best. He describes a walk from his home in St Marychurch, Torquay, to a local landmark called Daddyhole Plain and then onwards to the beach at Meadfoot (shown below in an image from the BritishBeaches website).

Gosse rested here, writing [2]:

The exertion of walking and collecting had given just enough of fatigue to the muscular system to make the dolce far niente a luxury. Under the shadow of a great angular block, I reclined, enjoying the beauty and exhilaration of the sunlight, while relieved from its oppression. Most brilliant was the flood of light with which very object was suffused in the unclouded blaze of that summer noon. How fine was the interchange of broad light and deep dark shadow, on those angular limestone cliffs! How glowing the coloured breadths of golden furze and purple-sheeted heath, expanded sea and vaulted sky!

His attention then turned to the rock pools at Meadfoot and the algae that were abundant here, one being Delesseria sanguinea, an herbarium specimen of which is shown below (image from Wikimedia Commons).

 He writes:

This very fine species is not uncommon all along the coast hereabouts, but is never seen except at the lowest level of the tide, where it grows often in considerable quantity, large leafy tufts springing out of the basal angles of the perpendicular masses of rock, or in persistent tide-pools hollowed in the rock itself. It will not bear exposure to the air with impunity, as many of our sea-weeds will; for if left uncovered but a short period, a quarter of an hour or even less, the delicate rose-crimson membrane becomes defiled with large blotches of a dull orange-colour, which shew that its texture is irrevocably injured, decomposition having already set in.

Thus, Henry Gosse introduces his readers to organisms of deeper water and the alien world that represents for us: the passage also conjuring up the pleasure of investigating the sea shore, which became a passion for many Victorians. As I sit writing this piece in my study in Hertfordshire on a very sunny June day, I certainly feel the pull of Meadfoot, just as many readers of Land and Sea must have done. All the more so, as I was brought up in Torbay and walked over the same shores that so beguiled Gosse.

Quite something for a chapter written more than 150 years ago.

[1] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[2] Philip Henry Gosse (1865) Land and Sea. London, James Nisbet & Co.

Death of a devout Christian

We don’t like talking about death, yet it is a natural process that we must all go through. The stages of dying are described factually in The Natural Death Handbook [1] and anyone fearing the event will hopefully be comforted by the account given in the book. That also applies to those around the dying patient, as it is as hard for the watchers as it is for the dying: shown clearly in Edvard Munch’s painting By The Death Bed (1896):

Of course, death can also be sudden and dramatic and the act of dying may not follow the sequence described in the book. There is also the emotional involvement in the process that religious belief has conditioned into us. In Christianity, death is the end of our time on Earth before our soul passes to an afterlife and, hopefully, entry to Heaven. The “fire and brimstone” school of Protestant preaching is designed to make us scared of the alternative: something that might happen if we move away from a particular set of religious beliefs and practices that some preachers espouse.

Although I am not a Christian, I would have thought that belief in Heaven and the death of Jesus to save our souls would bring comfort, but I wonder if it does? To try and find an answer, I wanted to see what happened to Philip Henry Gosse as he was among the most devout Christians that I have read about.

Gosse was an outstanding naturalist and achieved both popular, and scientific, fame from his books, papers and lectures. It can be argued that the most important events of Henry Gosse’s life were the death of his first wife Emily; his young son Edmund being “saved”; and the challenge to Creation (as described in Genesis) provided by ideas on evolution and the concept of geological time. He was a member of the Brethren (leading his own group) and had a profound belief in the imminence of the Second Coming, when believers would be carried up to Heaven in rapture.

Emily died of breast cancer [2] after being subjected to an “alternative” treatment that was more like quack medicine. During her final days, Henry was busy on writing and natural history projects, so Edmund and Emily spent much time together. Later, Henry wrote an account of Emily’s last days and I have not read it, nor am I likely to, as there are few copies still in existence [3]. She had a deep Christian faith and, while suffering a great deal of pain, I imagine that, at the end, she was happy to make the transition to Heaven, her main anxiety being that Edmund would be “saved” after the adult baptism that the Brethren practised.

As it turned out, Henry arranged that Edmund would be baptised as an “adult believer” three weeks after his 10th birthday, an act so unusual that people came to Torquay from miles around to witness the act. In his autobiography, Edmund, too, recognised that this was a very significant event in his life [4], but he went on to reject the rigid beliefs that Henry followed and this caused much tension between the two men. Edmund was also very involved in the Arts World of the time and Henry could not identify with this, or with Darwin’s important work in promoting ideas on evolution. In the year that Emily died, Henry had published Omphalos [5], that contained his theory that everything was created in six days; even rock strata that appeared to be millions of years old and which contained the fossilised remains of plant and animals. Unsurprisingly, Omphalos was rejected by both the scientific, and religious, communities and this further isolated Henry, making him even less able to shift from his strict literalist stance. I’m not sure how happy he was after becoming estranged from Edmund; being ridiculed by some readers of Omphalos; and generally worrying about being on the straight and narrow, although he was so dogmatic on that front that his passport to Heaven must have been assured in his own mind. 

He did enjoy the company of his grandchildren (the photograph above shows him in old age) and Edmund describes a happy time when the family spent 19th September 1887 at Goodrington, collecting along the shore [6]. It was shortly after this that Henry became ill with congestive heart disease and he died at “Sandhurst”, his home in Torquay, a little before 1 a.m. on 23rd August 1888; his nurse recording his last words as “It is all over. The Lord is near! I am going to my reward!” [7]. It was a peaceful end, as one would expect of someone with such a strong religious faith. Yet we know that, in the days before, Henry was angry with God, as his belief in the Second Coming was so strong that he hadn’t contemplated the act of dying that he had seen Emily pass through. How odd that such a devout Christian felt let down by God because he had to die, even though this is the fate of all humans.

Henry’s final days are described by Eliza [7]:

Even within the last fortnight, seeing me distressed, he said, “Oh, darling, don’t trouble. It is not too late; even now the Blessed Lord may come and take us both up together.” I believe he was buoyed up almost to the last with this strong hope.

Although Eliza describes being supported by Henry, Ann Thwaite [8], in her brilliant biography, details Henry’s own distress:

Eliza said that, though Henry Gosse had never had a revelation that he would himself be “one of the favoured saints who shall never taste of death”, he had waited and hoped and prayed. “This hope of being caught up before death continued to the last and its non-fulfilment was an acute disappointment to him. It undoubtedly was connected to the deep dejection of his latest hours on earth.”

So, does a religious faith help us when dying? I guess it all depends on the nature of one’s beliefs, whether one feels bad about past misdemeanours, and whether there are terrible threats of what might happen if one is on the wrong side in the afterlife. Of course, I don’t know whether I will make a deathbed religious conversion and I have no idea when, or how, I will die. However, I’m grateful to have been able to be broad and imaginative in my thinking and not constrained to what seems like the straitjacket of religious belief. Fancy going through all that for nothing.

  

[1] Stephanie Wienrich and Josefine Speyer (eds.) (2003) The Natural Death Handbook. London, Rider.

[2] Robert Boyd (2004) Emily Gosse. Bath, Olivet Books.

[3] R.B.Freeman and Douglas Wertheimer (1980) Philip Henry Gosse – A Bibliography. Folkestone, Dawson.

[4] Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son: a study of two temperaments. London, William Heinemann.

[5] Philip Henry Gosse (1857) Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot. London, John Van Voorst.

[6] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[7] Eliza Gosse (1896) Appendix I in Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[8] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: the life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888. London, Faber and Faber.

Remarkable, primitive animals from Cockington Stream

The small village of Cockington in Torbay is very popular with visitors who come to see its thatched cottages, old forge, and many other charming buildings, all nestling in a valley. It was the destination for the last carriage ride taken from his home in St Marychurch, Torquay, by the great natural historian Philip Henry Gosse, accompanied by his son Edmund. The ride, shortly before Henry’s death in 1888, is described very movingly by Edmund in a biography of his father [1,2].

I was brought up in Torbay, so I made the occasional visit to Cockington village as a child, although, as a family, we mostly stayed away from popular places. My fascination with natural history came from family walks in early childhood and it was the alien aquatic world that really grabbed my imagination. While marine organisms of the shore were readily visible - seaweeds, limpets, barnacles - most were hidden until one turned over stones in rock pools, or was lucky enough to wander down to the low water mark during Spring tides.

Childhood visits to the cinema in Paignton to watch films by the divers Hans and Lotte Hass made me aware that there was a natural world of which I knew very little and this added to its fascination. My imagination of this world extended to my play and I remember vividly placing a metal biscuit tin over my face, taking a deep breath and then diving under the bedclothes - nothing interesting was found! Using a snorkel in the sea would have terrified me as, although I was fascinated by what I saw in the cinema and in aquarium tanks, I was terrified of putting my head under water. It was truly an alien world for me and the feeling of wonder that so many aquatic organisms were unfamiliar stayed with me.

Later, I wandered around the coast on my own, looking at rock pools and I also enjoyed walking along country lanes, just for the pleasure of discovering new places, and being re-acquainted with those that were familiar. While I was happiest investigating the seashore, I also looked at the margins of local ponds and streams. On one walk along Cockington Lane - the same lane that Henry and Edmund Gosse had followed in their carriage - I decided to look for animals in the small stream that runs close to the road (see below). The upper part of the Cockington stream is dammed to form ornamental ponds and it then flows to the sea. Curious about what might be living in the stream, I picked up a few stones from the bed and, after examining them for a few seconds, was pleased that flatworms were very common and seemed to be on all the stones that I looked at. I still recall the discovery, even though it was nearly sixty years ago.

The flatworms were gliding over the surface of the stones and I was absorbed in watching their movement, as it wasn’t possible to see how they propelled themselves. Their locomotion is achieved by the beating of many thousands of microscopic cilia (small hair-like extensions from the cells covering the bottom surface of the worm), cells also secreting a mucus trail on which each worm moves, just as snails do. If watching their movement wasn’t fascinating enough, knowing that freshwater flatworms have remarkable powers of regeneration filled me with even more of a sense of wonder. I didn’t carry out any experiments like those shown in the videoclip below (where the movement of flatworms is also seen clearly) [3], but I knew about this ability. Not exactly like the sort of things that Hans and Lotte Hass filmed, but a fascinating part of the aquatic world nonetheless and to be seen only a short walk from where I lived.

Cockington gets many visitors and it is also a popular attraction for residents of South Devon, but I wonder how many of those having a cream tea, or strolling among the thatched buildings and lovely gardens, then walk back to the sea front along the boardwalk path? And of those, how many decide to look in the Cockington stream and see a quite different, yet fascinating, world? I am guessing that I was always in a very small minority.

[1] Edmund Gosse (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[2] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/12/henry-gosse-finds-sandhurst-in-torquay.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12xsf5g3Bo&t=58s

Henry Gosse finds Sandhurst in Torquay, his home for the next thirty years

As a boy growing up in Paignton, I knew that the railway from Newton Abbot to Kingswear had been built a hundred years before, but not that it had been completed in sections. The line ran to a terminus in Torquay (now called Torre) until it continued to Paignton in 1859 and on to Kingswear in 1864 [1].

It was to the old Torquay station that Philip Henry Gosse, the famous Natural Historian, came in 1857 and he then set off for St Marychurch, an area that he knew from an earlier visit to the town. He had decided to move away from London after the death of his wife, to continue his researches on marine life; his young son, Edmund, being his constant companion. In his first biography of his father [2], Edmund writes:

[St Marychurch] had just been seized with a building craze, and new villas, each in its separate garden, were rising on all hands. [Henry] Gosse hired a horse, and rode round the neighbourhood to see what he could find to suit him, and at last he discovered, near the top of the Torquay Road, what he thought was the exact place.

It was not an attractive object to the romantic eye. It is impossible to conceive anything much more dispiriting that this brand-new little house, unpapered, undried, standing in ghastly whiteness in the middle of a square enclosure of raw “garden,” that is to say of ploughed field, laid out with gravel walks, beds without a flower or leaf, and a “lawn” of fat red loam guiltless of one blade of grass. Two great rough pollard elms, originally part of a hedge which had run across the site of the lawn, were the only objects that relieved the monotony of the inchoate place, which spread out, vague and uncomely, “like the red outline of beginning Adam.” By taking the house in this condition, however, it was a cheap purchase, and my father felt that it would be a pleasure to discipline all this formlessness into beauty and fertility. He never repented of his choice, nor ever expressed, through more than thirty years, the wish that he had gone elsewhere. The Devonshire red loam is wonderfully stubborn, and for many seasons the place retained the obloquy of its newness. But at length the grass became velvety on the lawn, trees grew up and hid the unmossed limestone walls in which no vegetation can force a footing, and the little place grew bowery and secluded. It was on September 23, 1857, that the family settled in this house – named Sandhurst, by the builder, in mere wantonness of nomenclature – and this became their home.

Sandhurst is still there, although modified by extensions, and we held a Blue Plaque ceremony for Henry in the garden (see below). It was Henry Gosse’s home for the rest of his life and he died there in 1888. He had re-married in 1860 and his widow, Eliza, continued to live at Sandhurst, but Edmund had moved to London to work at the British Museum in 1867. Edmund’s views on life, and on religion, were different to those of Henry and this caused many difficulties for them both, although Nellie Gosse, Edmund’s wife, acted as a go-between during visits to Sandhurst, and she and her children were loved by Henry and Eliza.

Edmund writes of a final carriage ride that he took with Henry to Cockington and the scene described must have been very close to the spot shown in the photograph above, with the road (then a small lane) passing under the railway line to Paignton that had been completed nearly thirty years before [2]:

My father, with the pathetic look in his eyes, the mortal pallor on his cheeks, scarcely spoke, and seemed to observe nothing. But, as we turned to drive back down a steep lane of overhanging branches, the pale vista of the sea burst upon us, silvery blue in the yellow light of afternoon. Something in the beauty of the scene raised the sunken brain, and with a little of the old declamatory animation in head and hand, he began to recite the well-known passage in the fourth book of Paradise Lost

Now came still evening on, and twilight grey

Had in her sober livery all things clad.

He pursued the quotation through three or four lines, and then, in the middle of a sentence, the music broke, his head fell once more upon his breast, and for him the splendid memory, the self-sustaining intellect which had guided the body so long, were to be its companions on earth no more.

As an admirer of Philip Henry Gosse, I find Edmund’s account very moving and it is sad that they were never fully reconciled, although they were able to enjoy each other's company rather more in Henry's last years. The trip to Cockington was in July 1888 and it was the last drive out that Henry took, as his final illness had immobilised him. At the end there was little pain and he died on 23 August 1888, being buried on 27 August in unconsecrated ground in Torquay Cemetery. Eliza, who lived to be 87, was buried in the same grave on 18 October 1900 and I have visited it to pay my respects.

[1] C.R.Potts (1991) The Newton Abbot to Kingswear Railway (1844-1988). Wallingford, The Oakwood Press.

[2] Edmund Gosse (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry

Gosse. London, William Heinemann.